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Darfur villages burn as army tramples on UN peace plan

HELICOPTER gunships thudded over the dusty streets of El Fasher in North Darfur this weekend as the Sudanese government stepped up its latest offensive in defiance of a United Nations resolution.

John Prendergast, of the International Crisis Group, a non-governmental organisation that reports on conflicts, described seeing burnt-out villages and speaking to refugees who had been attacked by roving bands of heavily armed men in pick-up trucks.

“Humanitarian access has shrunk dramatically in the last two months, violence has increased and on top of that already gloomy picture we have a fresh offensive,” he said.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and 2m displaced since African rebels took up arms in 2003 to protest against perceived bias from a government dominated by Arabic-speakers. Sudanese government forces armed and organised Arabic-speaking tribes into the Janjaweed militias, which raped, tortured and murdered countless civilians.